


Landlocked

by Xidaer



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, JASS 2016, Jupiter Ascending Secret Santa 2016, Jupiter Ascending prequel, Mild Gore, OC Pet, The Badlands, brief consideration of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-12 15:16:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9078358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xidaer/pseuds/Xidaer
Summary: Jupiter Ascending Prequel: Caine in the Badlands, how he survived, and the companion that kept him going.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wiredclover](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=wiredclover).



Gravel bit into his hip and shoulder, the discomfort rousing Caine from a groggy stupor. The tribunal had drugged him, he remembered, after his sentencing. He twisted his arm behind him to touch the slightly oozing implants in his back where they’d clipped his wings. He brought his finger to his nose. No scent of infection. Good.

Caine gingerly sat up, feeling the sand and gravel shift beneath his skin, taking stock of himself and his surroundings. The Badlands. So good of the Entitled to wash their hands of the messy business of the death penalty. They wanted him to suffer for a crime he didn’t even remember committing. Worse, they’d accepted Stinger defending him and called The Badlands the ‘lesser sentence’. Now Stinger was off gods knew where stripped and clipped, just like him.

Hopefully not *just* like him. The Entitled had taken the sentence of stripped literally. He sat on the hot sand, naked, no wings, no clothes, no boots. His feet look so strange. Skyjacker boots were like a second skin; he could sleep, shower, fight, and fuck in them. There was no reason to ever take them off. Now his feet look pale, soft, traced with veins of metal where the neuroimplants previously connected. They felt almost weightless, hell, he felt almost weightless without his wings. It made him wonder about the gravity of this world.

Rumors said the worse your crime, the less you’re left with. They also said that the planet was an ice ball with roving bands of criminals. He’d never taken the rumors seriously, chalking it up to a mythical boogeyman prison to keep rabble rousers in line. The world around him was flat, rusty desert as far as he could see, the cloudless sky tinted pale blue, and there was an oppressive, dry heat. A glimmer of metal caught his eye. A knife, blade barely the length of his palm- oh, he’d definitely pissed the Entitled off.

Caine shifted, sitting as comfortably as he could before closing his eyes to the sun’s glare. He opened himself to everything. The scents and sounds of the Badlands slowly replaced his own; the smallest of breezes, some sort of burrowing creature too far away to be sure of any details, the overpowering scent of dust and sand, the scent of-- blood. Yes, blood, far in the distance. Blood enough to mean death and not a wound, but blood without the ozone of blaster fire, without the smoke fires of the battlefield, the burnt metal of captured starships.

He cautiously rolled to his feet, gritting his teeth at the heat from the sand on his unprotected soles. Pain was going to be a constant companion in the Badlands, he might as well get used to it now. Moving slow, Caine took care to breathe only through his nose; Dehydration was going to be his first enemy to overcome. What would he need to survive? Water, of course, and food- both of which might be found as he drew closer to the source of the blood- but he would also need shelter and quickly. Half-albino, Caine knew that roasting in the Badland’s dry sun would cut his survival rate in half. He’d seen sun sickness in his unit before and he could already see pink in his skin.

The flat plains of the desert were broken by a ridge, noises of life other than his own reaching his ears far before he reached the lip. Wet tearing of flesh, squabbling bird calls, and rustling feathers; the last sent a pang of loss through him. Carrion birds with razor sharp beaks ripped into what had been some sort of enormous beast. He stayed back, down wind, watching. Acid bit at the back of Caine’s throat, a rising jealousy of their wings, frustrated at his limitations. He sat back against the edge of the ridge, resting his aching back and feet, and racked his brain trying to remember what had consigned him to waiting on scavengers to eat their fill. There was only a blank. Nothing between going on patrol and waking in chains being dragged to a cell.

Though the sun had moved down some towards the horizon, it was impossible to tell just how long it took the birds to eat their fill and fly off. Caine scrambled down from his resting place, keen on seeing what was left for him to pick over before the night time scavengers arrived. The carrion was an obscene display, belly ripped open and organs devoured. Its ribs were spread open like a satellite dish, almost picked clean and even the eyes were gone from its skull. With larger bones broken to access the marrow, it wasn’t really possible to piece together what the beast had looked like originally. If ever he needed an example of the harsh efficiency of the Badlands, this was it. Caine batted away flies, briefly wondering if the maggots that would eventually hatch would be edible, and began evaluating what little was left.

Despite being small, his knife was sharp enough to strip the skin. Caine sawed at the hardening connective tissue, peeling back the hide in pieces as large as he could manage. The meat that had been protected from the scavengers was tempting but in the end untrustworthy. Despite his hunger, it was better to wait for more scavengers and try to take a fresh kill instead.  

Arms coated in the cooling blood of the creature, Caine stretched out what he had harvested to cure in what was left of the day. He could feel the temperature beginning to fall and laid in the shade from the ridge he’d come from, thankful for the reprieve. Eyes closed, Caine did not sleep, only quieted himself as he did when he first woke. Listening. Scenting. He heard the animal long before it started drawing close to him, attracted by the scent of decay. Although by the sounds of its shuffling it was a smaller than the carcass, that wasn’t saying much given the first’s bulk. Caine knew he’d only have one chance to surprise it and make a quick kill.

Its pulse came close, but Caine waited for the wet snout of the beast to roam over his face before springing his trap. His eyes snapped open, his knife already moving unerringly to the pulse point on the beast’s throat. Hot blood sprayed over him as the desert boar reared back with a panicked squeal. It tried to run but only made it a few steps before it succumbed to its injury and fell. The taste of blood on his lips shouldn't have felt unfamiliar, but it was. Perhaps Entitled blood tasted rotten; perhaps Caine was just too thirsty to care.

He didn’t waste anymore of the liquid than necessary. The red iron taste sated his thirst and Caine moved on to gutting his kill. While he could imagine an Entitled cutting out the heart, the thought of one devouring that still-warm organ raw was beyond him. Seeing a splice move from that to the liver, kidneys, and finally to imitating the carrion birds breaking into the bone marrow, that would confirm any Entitled’s thoughts that splices were more beast than human.

Stuffed, Caine realized the lethargy in his muscles wasn’t just from hunger or thirst but the length of day on this planet. His internal clock had never been the best but even he could feel the pull of exhaustion. This ‘day’ in the Badlands had been at least two, maybe three, standard days already. With the sun sinking lower on the horizon, he looked forward to nightfall- a reprieve from the heat and from endless desert. He wanted the dark blanket of night to sweep over him, to pull him into an ocean of stars. Life in space was the cold comfort of being surrounded by stars, the known dangers of a starship and the void. Lit by artificial light, held by artificial gravity, with only the occasional shore leave planet side to show the variation of both in the natural world. Peering straight up, Caine could barely make out the brightest of stars. The sun was at the horizon now, yet the sky was still as blue as before, the expected gradual creeping darkness from the opposite horizon not making an appearance. If anything it looked brighter.

A second sun was rising.

There would be no nightfall for him today.

He needed sleep, but animals meant water and it would be easier to track back the beast he’d just killed now rather than letting the scent go cold. Caine used his knife to fashion rough moccasins out of the first hide he’d taken. The knots running the length of his feet and up his ankles chafed, but he knew he’d make better time with these than barefoot. Taking a thigh bone as a club, Caine threw the second skin over his shoulders to cure as he walked.

It was easy tracking the scent and the beast’s footprints backwards, the breeze had calmed and left them as perfect indentations in the sand. Slowly, as the second sun climbed high overhead signs of vegetation began to grow more frequent; tall cacti, a thorny bush his meal had marked along its way, short clumps of grasses. Soon, the scent he was tracking mixed with the taste of water in the air. His muscles ached with fatigue as he found it- an oasis in the Badlands.

Caine threw down his improvised cape and stumbled down the short bank into the clear water. There weren’t any fish or water-going dangers that he could tell and the water was fresh and cool against his overheated skin. He spared little thought for the moccasins, assuming they’d dry into a better fit anyway. The pool wasn’t particularly wide, maybe 20 or 30 other legionnaires could relax in it, but it was deep and cold. Caine thought it was likely a natural spring though that seemed like too much good fortune to find on a world like this.

He set up camp under one of the thorny trees ringing the water, eventually improvising a small hut beneath its branches. It was impossible to keep track of the days, one sunrise leading into the next. He knew a few weeks had passed once his sunburn had completely peeled and his skin healed into a galaxy of freckles. Sometimes he thought he could spot a star or two in that moment locked between a horizon in dusk and a horizon in dawn, but it he did him no good to dwell on them. For all that the Badlands was supposed to be a hive of the worst criminals and political dissenters, it was empty to him except for the steady stream of desert foxes, canines, diminutive deer, and occasional rabbit that came to drink from the oasis. Solitude and a sharp knife were a combination with malicious intent when it came to lycanthrope splices, but Caine wasn’t going to give the Entitled bastards who’d sent him here the satisfaction.

He began traveling, short distances at first, just picking a direction and seeing if there was anything worthwhile other than desert. Occasionally he’d harvest a succulent, but honestly the trips did little to ease his mind. A prison, even one the size of a planet, was a prison and he felt like all he was doing was pacing his cage. The eternal day and endless heat, he’d realized, wasn’t left out of the Badland’s rumors intentionally. Although he couldn’t be sure, if the suns circled above him with little variation, then the planet poles would constantly be lacking in their light and heat. Thus the ice world of legend. The only thing he hesitated to consider was if that’s the only story that came out from this world, then why had no one ever mentioned the desert before?

With these chilling thoughts in mind, Caine came back to his oasis and stopped short. There was movement in his hut. Whatever the creature or being was he could wait it out, lay siege to his own home if he had to. Hiding in the tall grass by the water’s edge, Caine watched. The motions were low, blundering, obviously an animal, and judging by the noises that animal had found his stores of sun-cured meat. With that, Caine discarded his initial thought of waiting and began stalking up to his hut. He caught glimpses through the branches- the beast was a canine, but small, half the size of most of its kind.

It caught his scent and began growling low in its throat, turning to guard the prize it had found. Surprise lost, Caine cautiously approached the entrance, getting his first good look at the intruder, Its, no, her, her ribs showed through along her sides and there were scars both across her muzzle and shoulder. She was a fighter, this little beast, probably used to fighting for every scrap she could get in this harsh world. Sympathy swelled within him, images of the creche where he was raised before being sold to the Legion coming to the forefront of his mind.

Caine took a step back and knelt, bringing him down her level. “Gree-,” he started to say before the words became a coughing fit. His voice was rusty from disuse and the dry air. “Greetings, little huntress,” Caine began again, letting his arms fall open, nonthreatening. “You’re in my home, such as it is, and I would very much appreciate it if you’d leave me my supplies.”

At his words, she began to relax ever so slightly though she came no closer. Reaching down, she grabbed one last portion of Caine’s rations in her jaws and dashed through the door, away from Caine and the oasis.

After that day, Caine put his explorations on hold but kept a sharp eye out for his little thief. He placed some of his kills on the outskirts of the oasis, then a bit closer as time went on. With her in mind, more time was spent making his living space just a bit more habitable. He hauled small batches of water in his largest pelt to water the short thorny tree where he’d build his den. It grew taller, fiercer as his little thief grew less wary of him. Finally, the day Caine tried to roast tubers from the reeds growing at the shore, she came up to him. Her ribs were no longer prominent and when he placed a small portion of his meal beside him, she didn’t hesitate to take it.

 

Without a nightfall to judge against, the days bled into each other. Water the tree, check the sun curing hides and meat, improve the hut. It was enough to occupy him to continue building trust with the little canine who now didn’t leave his side. Solace, he’d started calling her in his head. Sol and Ace, separate they meant one, alone, but together they meant comfort, solace to their loneliness. She wasn’t Stinger or Kiza or the Legion, but Solace was a companion in the Badlands, something the Entitled probably never thought he’d find. 

He started his excursions again, now with Solace, just picking a direction and walking until they’ve gone through half the rations they carried. With the rough pack Caine managed to rig up for Solace’s back as well as a bag for himself, sometimes they’d come back with more than they started with. They’d forage using Solace’s experience to know which plants were safe and which to avoid. Desert berries and cactus fruit, rough bark leaking sticky sap they had to fight off stinging insects for, even small game Solace would dash after like a rocket. She’d bring the rabbit or shrew to share with him, offering him first choice of the organs.

Traveling further afield, the pair stumbled upon a desiccated corpse in the sand. Caine was dumbstruck. Proof of life other than his own; a person, no, a prisoner who had not been as lucky. Solace whined, licking his hand, trying to encourage Caine out of his shock. Blinking, he looked down and ran his hand through her fur. This was where he was, the Badlands, still a prison even with Solace. He’d found an oasis, created a home. He had survived. The body on the ground, whoever they may have been, was a jarring reminder that this was not a choice he’d made. That this was not normal.

Although the corpse had been dead for gods knew how long, it still had some gear that was salvageable. Most of the tattered clothes would work better as kindling, but the boots far outstripped the sun-cured leather moccasins Caine still wore. He found a bigger knife with a sheath and, the biggest prize, a canteen. This person, Caine mused, had been better liked.

With the new gear, their trips out were longer. Caine was chasing the hope that if there was one body, then maybe there were other people still alive- other survivors of this prison. Solace and he would find shade if they could and pitch some furs as shade if they couldn’t, sleeping seven or eight times on their walks. Sleep was the only way to measure days in this world. On the outer edges of these trips, they discovered snow-capped mountain ranges in the distance, breaking up the endless desert. But despite their efforts there were no other signs of habitation.

 

***

 

Caine sat by one of their rare fires, Solace sleeping next to him stuffed with the excesses of their last trip out. He watched the smoke drift into the sky, occasionally turning the meat he was attempting to smoke above it. It was hard to recognize the lengthening of shadows at first, shade being something that needed to be made, not something the sky provided. Caine looked up from the fire and realized that although one sun had set, the second had not yet risen. The blanket of night he’d been expecting since the day he’d arrived was finally creeping up over them. With it, came an ocean of stars, brighter and more clear than he’d remembered. Caine couldn’t look away from the sky. Home. That was home. His cheeks were wet, but he wasn’t conscious of crying. A shooting star streaked passed- no, it was a ship. The dot of light swung around, streaking back towards the oasis. Solace stirred at the noise, rising up and growling low at the incoming invader. As the ship landed, the bright rays of dawn crested again. Caine took one last look at the stars as the sun’s light drowned them before wiping his face and heading to the transport.

The flyer’s rear door opened with a hiss, revealing a deer splice dressed in a copper gown. Solace’s growl deepened. She snarled, baring her teeth at the woman. “Caine Wise?” The woman asked, treating the obvious threat as inconsequential.

“Yes,” he answered, voice rough from disuse. The dismissal of Solace this close to the ship meant hidden firepower; well-concealed, beautifully decorated firepower meant this was a messenger of a high ranking Entitled.

“Excellent,” she continued. “My lord, Titus Abrasax, would like to make you an offer. If you’ll join me…?” She swept out her arm indicating that he should board the ship.

He was torn. A deal with the devil would take him home, but Solace.... “Both of us,” Caine stated, placing his hand on Solace’s back.

“Just you, Mr. Wise, although the bargain does involve assisting your former commander as well.” She let the statement hang for a moment. “There is a limited window.”

Stinger was a trump card and the Entitled knew it. Caine knelt by his companion. “Solace,” he said, using her name for the first time aloud, “I swear- I swear I’ll come back to you.” Despite her focus still being on the Abrasax messenger, he hugged Solace around her neck and shoulders, knowing she wouldn’t understand what was about to happen.

“Alright,” he said standing. “Let’s go.”

 

***

 

“You okay?” Jupiter said taking his hand.

“Yeah,” Caine replied, staring out the view port. The rumors hadn’t lied, mostly. The Badland’s poles were ice caps, flowing down almost all the way to the equator where a rust colored band belted the prison. It was a special sort of hell that he’d been dropped into that narrow section with no idea just how close other sentient beings had been. Caine took a deep breath, dropping his eyes from the planet, “just…,” he trailed off.

“Yeah,” she said leaning into him, head on his shoulder. “Just.”

They stood in silence as the world grew bigger

Landing at his oasis was anticlimactic. Nothing had changed really- it hadn’t been long enough for anything to change. Jupiter stood on the gangplank, watching him walk out into the sand, “Are you sure you don’t-?”

“I’m sure,” Caine replied, not looking back. His footsteps, now heavy with his skyjacker boots, carried him deeper into the oasis.

“Solace!” His voice rang out. He had nothing else to call her really, and nothing but hope that she’d stayed.

He shouted again, “Solace!”

There from his hut, he saw something stirring. “Solace?” he said softly as he approached. A familiar snout poked around the opening of the hut, giving a bark as she saw him.

Dashing across the sand, Solace bound into his arms, covering Caine’s face in reassuring, celebratory licks. It was going to be alright. He was going to take Solace home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a JA: Secret Santa gift for Wiredclover (name via tumblr)
> 
> Their prompt was "Star ocean, Caine, cold, love" and they requested no smut.
> 
> I focused on Caine and Star ocean--- then completely missed 'cold'... I may have facepalmed over that once I realized it. In any event, Caine *was* on an ice world, just happened to be the one super hot part of it. So I hope my person will forgive me that slip.


End file.
